goalless draw in the madrid derby
The Official 2019/2020 Football/Soccer Thread
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Its a whole new system they are getting used too, it will take time especially against the top teams... When they played against West Ham, Southampton and Burnley they looked really good/entertaining...
Its weird seeing them play 3 at the back though, they have played the traditional 4 at the back for as long as Ive watched them...
Dunk is really good at and Burn who is like 12ft tall is surprisingly tricky on his feet and good on the ball but yeah its a tough watch at times, they arnt City or Liverpool... iimo sometimes these lower levels teams just need to clear the ball and not religiously stick to passing out...
Ive not seen any football this weekend though as Ive been mad busy with some schitt so need to catch up...
Best result!
dontdiedontkillanyone
Show some love, you losers!
Blue_London
OG
Obviously it's still early but hazard lack of professionalism is hurting him and is showing signs of repeating that season
Meanwhile trippier seems to be embracing this chance doing everything possible to make it work
Meanwhile trippier seems to be embracing this chance doing everything possible to make it work
OLIVER HOLT: John Barnes is still my icon but he's in danger of trashing his reputation... his defence of Bernardo Silva once again put him at odds with those leading the fight against discrimination
I still have a great deal of respect for John Barnes. I still admire the way he dealt with the racism that was aimed at him when he was a player.
The picture of him backheeling a banana off the pitch at Goodison Park in 1988 is one of the most powerful images of the time. Barnes was a pioneer in football's fight against ignorance, a fight he handled with dignity and grace.
I admire some of what he says about the same issues now, too. I agree with him when he says that fighting racism is just as much about dealing with what people think as what they say. I am also aware that it would be strange indeed for me, a white, middle-class, middle-aged, middle-of-the-road journalist to lecture him on what he should think about race.
I'm not going to do that. But when I heard Barnes on talkSport on Thursday night, arguing passionately that there was nothing wrong with Bernardo Silva tweeting a picture of a thick-lipped, dark-skinned cartoon character used to advertise a Spanish brand of chocolate peanuts called Conguitos and likening it to a picture of Benjamin Mendy, it made me feel uncomfortable.
We might as well be honest about this: there is zero similarity between the young Mendy and the Conguitos cartoon. It is not a likeness. It is not a caricature. It is not an approximation.
I accept that Silva's intentions were not malicious but he might as well have put a picture of the golliwog from the Robertson's Jam label next to the image of Mendy. The effect would have been the same.
Pep Guardiola attempted to excuse Silva by saying he speaks five languages. Maybe he has six fingers, too. I don't know. It doesn't matter.
He could speak 20 languages and have a thousand telephones that don't ring and it wouldn't change the fact that juxtaposing those images on Twitter carried historical and cultural connotations in this country of which he was clearly unaware.
I would not accuse Bernardo of being a racist. Nor would I argue he should be banned from playing. The advertising image used by Conguitos is culturally acceptable in Spain and Portugal.
It sells more than 30 million packets annually so there is little offence taken elsewhere. But here, because of our history, perhaps, it is different.
At a time when incidences of racism in football are on the rise again, when black players are routinely abused on social media and when Bernardo's City team-mate Raheem Sterling has been singled out for abuse inside and outside stadiums, it would have been better if Guardiola had formulated a response that went beyond: 'Nothing to see here.'
We have seen before that there is a fairly high bar for what offends managers when it comes to something one of their own players has done.
There is still reason to think that in all other regards Bernardo may indeed be the 'exceptional person' Guardiola says he is. But when City have done so much good work around racism and have spoken so well on behalf of Sterling when he has been the subject of racist abuse, Guardiola's stance on the issue feels discordant.
It is the same with Barnes. Hearing him on the radio made me feel uncomfortable not just because of what he was saying but because I know that a man I still regard as an icon is in the process of trashing his reputation with the community he fought so hard to stand up for.
He is entitled to dismiss what I think but when his views are increasingly at odds with those now leading the fight against discrimination, it ought to give him pause for thought.
Barnes has amassed a canon of work in this area that includes saying he thought Liam Neeson should be given a medal for his honesty in admitting he once entertained the idea of murdering a random black man, suggesting that highly paid footballers like Jadon Sancho should think about the discrimination less privileged black men and women face when they complain about abuse from the terraces and now saying he thinks it would be wrong were Bernardo to be punished for his tweet.
Some of this, frankly, seems perverse. Barnes always argues with great conviction but it is hard to believe he cannot appreciate there is a wider context to images like the Conguitos cartoon.
You do not have to be a super-vigilant advocate of political correctness to find a quasi-comic image of a little brown man-child from the Congo with thick, bright red lips, bulging eyes and a round belly redolent of an imperialist past when black people were regarded as an inferior, subservient race to be mocked and enslaved.
'Barnes makes it harder for me to live my life as a black man,' the young writer Carl Anka wrote on The Athletic website last week. 'Both in the professional sense, trying to work in football, and in the personal one, trying to exist in the United Kingdom.
'His default position of 'it's society's problem' makes him an easy rent-a-quote for people looking to silence others. Again and again, Barnes is there, ridiculing the racism that young black men face. To see a man who enlivened a generation of black football fans repeatedly silence the voices of another hurts immeasurably.'
Look at the Barnes fan club on social media and the vast majority of them are white men. What Bernardo Silva did was far from the worst thing in the world. It was nothing the apology he has made to the FA would not fix.
What was harder to countenance was the rush to defend him and the thought of how many real racists that will enable.
I still have a great deal of respect for John Barnes. I still admire the way he dealt with the racism that was aimed at him when he was a player.
The picture of him backheeling a banana off the pitch at Goodison Park in 1988 is one of the most powerful images of the time. Barnes was a pioneer in football's fight against ignorance, a fight he handled with dignity and grace.
I admire some of what he says about the same issues now, too. I agree with him when he says that fighting racism is just as much about dealing with what people think as what they say. I am also aware that it would be strange indeed for me, a white, middle-class, middle-aged, middle-of-the-road journalist to lecture him on what he should think about race.
I'm not going to do that. But when I heard Barnes on talkSport on Thursday night, arguing passionately that there was nothing wrong with Bernardo Silva tweeting a picture of a thick-lipped, dark-skinned cartoon character used to advertise a Spanish brand of chocolate peanuts called Conguitos and likening it to a picture of Benjamin Mendy, it made me feel uncomfortable.
We might as well be honest about this: there is zero similarity between the young Mendy and the Conguitos cartoon. It is not a likeness. It is not a caricature. It is not an approximation.
I accept that Silva's intentions were not malicious but he might as well have put a picture of the golliwog from the Robertson's Jam label next to the image of Mendy. The effect would have been the same.
Pep Guardiola attempted to excuse Silva by saying he speaks five languages. Maybe he has six fingers, too. I don't know. It doesn't matter.
He could speak 20 languages and have a thousand telephones that don't ring and it wouldn't change the fact that juxtaposing those images on Twitter carried historical and cultural connotations in this country of which he was clearly unaware.
I would not accuse Bernardo of being a racist. Nor would I argue he should be banned from playing. The advertising image used by Conguitos is culturally acceptable in Spain and Portugal.
It sells more than 30 million packets annually so there is little offence taken elsewhere. But here, because of our history, perhaps, it is different.
At a time when incidences of racism in football are on the rise again, when black players are routinely abused on social media and when Bernardo's City team-mate Raheem Sterling has been singled out for abuse inside and outside stadiums, it would have been better if Guardiola had formulated a response that went beyond: 'Nothing to see here.'
We have seen before that there is a fairly high bar for what offends managers when it comes to something one of their own players has done.
There is still reason to think that in all other regards Bernardo may indeed be the 'exceptional person' Guardiola says he is. But when City have done so much good work around racism and have spoken so well on behalf of Sterling when he has been the subject of racist abuse, Guardiola's stance on the issue feels discordant.
It is the same with Barnes. Hearing him on the radio made me feel uncomfortable not just because of what he was saying but because I know that a man I still regard as an icon is in the process of trashing his reputation with the community he fought so hard to stand up for.
He is entitled to dismiss what I think but when his views are increasingly at odds with those now leading the fight against discrimination, it ought to give him pause for thought.
Barnes has amassed a canon of work in this area that includes saying he thought Liam Neeson should be given a medal for his honesty in admitting he once entertained the idea of murdering a random black man, suggesting that highly paid footballers like Jadon Sancho should think about the discrimination less privileged black men and women face when they complain about abuse from the terraces and now saying he thinks it would be wrong were Bernardo to be punished for his tweet.
Some of this, frankly, seems perverse. Barnes always argues with great conviction but it is hard to believe he cannot appreciate there is a wider context to images like the Conguitos cartoon.
You do not have to be a super-vigilant advocate of political correctness to find a quasi-comic image of a little brown man-child from the Congo with thick, bright red lips, bulging eyes and a round belly redolent of an imperialist past when black people were regarded as an inferior, subservient race to be mocked and enslaved.
'Barnes makes it harder for me to live my life as a black man,' the young writer Carl Anka wrote on The Athletic website last week. 'Both in the professional sense, trying to work in football, and in the personal one, trying to exist in the United Kingdom.
'His default position of 'it's society's problem' makes him an easy rent-a-quote for people looking to silence others. Again and again, Barnes is there, ridiculing the racism that young black men face. To see a man who enlivened a generation of black football fans repeatedly silence the voices of another hurts immeasurably.'
Look at the Barnes fan club on social media and the vast majority of them are white men. What Bernardo Silva did was far from the worst thing in the world. It was nothing the apology he has made to the FA would not fix.
What was harder to countenance was the rush to defend him and the thought of how many real racists that will enable.
'He's not in the wrong': Raheem Sterling stands by Man City team-mate Bernardo Silva in wake of racism storm over Benjamin Mendy tweet... but defence of star by Pep Guardiola wasn't backed by club
STERLING'S DEFENCE OF BERNARDO SILVA IN FULL
'I thought it's a situation between two friends. I can see the point about some people getting touchy feely on it but I feel in that situation Bernardo made a joke to his friend.
He's not referred to his skin colour. He's not referred to his lips. In both pictures they've both got small heads and most importantly for me he didn't refer to a colour. We all know and everyone can see Mendy is a black lad.
We've got to be proud to be black too. If someone makes a reference to our skin in an image you can't be upset about it. He hasn't referred to his colour. It is sad to see someone like Bernardo all week be kind of down about it.
He's not that way inclined and they're two really good friends. It's really sad to see. I can understand why the criticism has come. There's no intentional racism and it's not because it's my team-mates.
I don't feel there's any racism in it but I can see where people are coming from. Bernardo is deeply sorry about it, he's not in the wrong for me but I can see why people think it is. We have to be smart on social media this day in age.
'The club has handled the situation right. There's no intentional discrimination. Not one moment does he use a negative comment about his skin colour.
He tried to make a joke and that wasn't the best one but we've got to move on and understand it wasn't intentional.'
STERLING'S DEFENCE OF BERNARDO SILVA IN FULL
'I thought it's a situation between two friends. I can see the point about some people getting touchy feely on it but I feel in that situation Bernardo made a joke to his friend.
He's not referred to his skin colour. He's not referred to his lips. In both pictures they've both got small heads and most importantly for me he didn't refer to a colour. We all know and everyone can see Mendy is a black lad.
We've got to be proud to be black too. If someone makes a reference to our skin in an image you can't be upset about it. He hasn't referred to his colour. It is sad to see someone like Bernardo all week be kind of down about it.
He's not that way inclined and they're two really good friends. It's really sad to see. I can understand why the criticism has come. There's no intentional racism and it's not because it's my team-mates.
I don't feel there's any racism in it but I can see where people are coming from. Bernardo is deeply sorry about it, he's not in the wrong for me but I can see why people think it is. We have to be smart on social media this day in age.
'The club has handled the situation right. There's no intentional discrimination. Not one moment does he use a negative comment about his skin colour.
He tried to make a joke and that wasn't the best one but we've got to move on and understand it wasn't intentional.'
toheeb27
OG
Is he still out of shape?
Hundredeyes
Active Member
Lmao all this time I thought Arsenal would be taking down Man 'the scum' United down today... Turns out its a Monday night game lol smh
toheeb27
OG
Lol, actually need a Man Utd win. Will keep all 3 of us at 11 points. Plus will make AFTV more enjoyable.
Blue_London
OG
Yeah looking so rusty as one pundit put it he's a bit heavy.
Benzema is Keeping him and Zidane out of trouble if Barca was dominant it would be different
Mknight
Active Member
He is playing well because he has Koke in front of him, to protect and conceal some of his defensive frailties. Same shit he had with sissoko at Spurs, it just got to a point where his individual mistakes was costing us a lot of games.
Blue_London
OG
All them properties between goodison park and anfeild are sooo affordable!
dope goal by pereira
thought it was a harsh red......till I saw the replay! GTFOH with that tackle!!! Newcastle man down and goal down going into half-time
thought it was a harsh red......till I saw the replay! GTFOH with that tackle!!! Newcastle man down and goal down going into half-time
leicester taking the pi$$
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